At age 17, I worked as a lifeguard for the summer for the second time. I left the employ of the large noisy public swimming pool that I worked at my first summer and for the sake of 75 cents more per hour I took over the sole lifeguarding job at a small and quiet apartment complex pool. I'm sure I wasted the extra money I earned, but luckily I didn't waste the almost 40 hours per week I had to sit in a lounge chair and read. It was the summer before college, I had recently been bitten with a bug to read the classics, and among the many doorstoppers I made it through that summer, this is the dog-eared beaten up copy of The Republic of Plato that I took from my father's bookshelf to read. I think my dad bought it secondhand so there were at least three people who could have flung it across the room—thus accounting for its currently tenuous state of bind.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato "can be recognized to be far more exploratory, incompletely systematic, elusive, and playful than (other philosophers). That, along with his gifts as a writer and as a creator of vivid character and dramatic setting, is one of the reasons why he is often thought to be the ideal author from whom one should receive one's introduction to philosophy. His readers are not presented with an elaborate system of doctrines held to be so fully worked out that they are in no need of further exploration or development; instead, what we often receive from Plato is a few key ideas together with a series of suggestions and problems about how those ideas are to be interrogated and deployed. Readers of a Platonic dialogue are drawn into thinking for themselves about the issues raised, if they are to learn what the dialogue itself might be thought to say about them. Many of his works therefore give their readers a strong sense of philosophy as a living and unfinished subject (perhaps one that can never be completed) to which they themselves will have to contribute."

It's shocking to me to read that paragraph now and realize that is precisely what happened to me, finally starting my own contributions to philosophy almost 25 years after first confronting these dialogues of Plato with ruminations that were were often preceded by my slamming the book shut to think through his / Socrates' words and then shout my own dialogue replies loudly in my head. I don't mean to dismiss the writings—they stretched my mind deeply in a way that nothing else had before and were therefore utterly fascinating. From the Amazon description of the book, Plato's The Republic is, "widely acknowledged as the cornerstone of Western philosophy. Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, it is an inquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. During the conversation other questions are raised: what is goodness; what is reality; what is knowledge? The Republic also addresses the purpose of education and the role of both women and men as "guardians" of the people. With remarkable lucidity and deft use of allegory, Plato arrives at a depiction of a state bound by harmony and ruled by philosopher kings." What brash 17 year old about to go off and make his way in the world doesn't wish he could be one of these kings? And maybe even change his republic to accept such a rule?

Alfred North Whitehead, in Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), wrote the often quoted phrase that, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." Perhaps this is true by default since, once again quoting the Stanford Encyclopedia, "Plato was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word 'philosopher' should be applied, but he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived—a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called his invention." For that invention, we should all be grateful, even if the answers Plato gave to the questions he posed were not always ones that survive the 2400 years of dialogue they spawned among the world's greatest thinkers. Before I sort Plato's main arguments into my Survival of the Fittest Philosophers model, I thought I would share some of his direct quotes. They're wonderful reminders of the beauty of reading philosophy so I think this will become a regular feature of this series. Here goes.

Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

All knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only through this will our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.

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Plato (428-348 BCE) was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

Survives
Many have interpreted Plato as stating that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view that informed future developments in modern analytic epistemology. When beliefs are justified through the scientific method, they can be said to contain current knowledge. Just as the universe is forever changing and evolving, so knowledge may change and evolve. But just as the universe appears stable over many time horizons, so knowledge can also be stable for great lengths of time.

Needs to Adapt
Plato listed a threefold division of philosophy into dialectic, ethics, and physics. Today, there are six branches of Philosophy: Logic, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics, and Political Philosophy. Physics is one of the many natural sciences.

Virtue is knowledge, the cognition of the supreme form of the Good. Knowledge of what exactly good actions are is necessary for virtue, but actions are what count.

Gone Extinct
Apprehensions derived from the impression of sense can never give us knowledge of true being (the forms) - that can only be obtained by the soul’s activity within itself (reason). Plato’s forms are merely the definitions we create to separate the world into objects of similar qualities. Just because we see categories of things, this does nothing to imply that there are perfect forms of these categories somewhere in the ether. There are no forms, and knowledge is obtained through the combined use of senses and reason.

Plato posited the theory of forms being unchangeable and eternal. Particular objects of sense are imperfect copies. There are no one, perfect, eternal forms. In a universe that is moving and changing, environments change and objects must adapt to new conditions. Diversity is a necessary ingredient in adaptability. There is no perfect “chair." Particular chairs fit their purpose and their environment. These conditions can change, so chairs must too. Plato’s forms are easy to imagine precisely because they are imaginary.

Platonism is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying the reality of the material world. The idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave. According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few climb out of the den, or cave of ignorance, and those who do, not only have a terrible struggle to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and ridicule. For good reason. While we may need other instruments in addition to our senses to perceive it, the material world is real. Imagining perfect forms behind the reality of objects is both ignorant of the necessity for diversity and adaptability, as well as damaging to the appreciation of the beauty of existence.

Plato posited a theory of the cosmos as the physical world created using the world of forms as its model. Forms don’t exist. Modern cosmology knows much more than this.
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Do you have your own words to speak in this dialogue? Perhaps you were introduced to Plato in a different though still meaningful way? Share your thoughts below so we can consider them too.

The Parthenon. The 2,500 year old temple that overlooks the city of Athens was undergoing a structural renovation when I visited it in 2004. No wonder—that is an impressively long time to be standing around on an exposed hilltop assaulted by rain, wind, blistering sun, and the occasional freezing cold. Interestingly, the father of Socrates (the father of western philosophy) was himself a professional stonemason who happened to work on the Parthenon. Which progeny do you think he thought would survive the longest? The stone of his building? Or the words of his son?

Technically, the question is still an open one, but either way the man could not have known that both would survive as long as they have. As a new temple (which was replacing one destroyed just 33 years prior by the invading Persians), the Parthenon was dedicated to the goddess Athena who, according to Greek mythology, is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. Heady stuff, well worth remembering, but many monuments similarly dedicated have eroded around the world into windblown dust. The words of Socrates, much like the previous acropoleis on the hill, were also silenced by attacks from ignorant foes, only to be raised again by succeeding and remembering generations. We know about his drinking of hemlock, punished for being the gadfly of Athens that stung the state into action, but like Athena, a goddess of war strategy who disliked fighting without purpose and preferred to use wisdom to settle predicaments, Socrates stood by his principles, dying stoically for his beliefs, trusting his wisdom to withstand the painful attacks of the moment as well as the slow erosion of the future. He was rightly confident with wisdom expressed in words such as these:

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Let him who would move the world, first move himself.

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

The difficulty is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.

Is there not one true coin, for which all things ought to exchange?--and that is wisdom.

All I know is that I know nothing.

Still relevant today. But let's take a look at more than just these aphorisms and see how the general ideas of Socrates fare in my evaluation of the Survival of the Fittest Philosophers.

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Socrates (469-400 BCE) Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the writings of his student Plato.

Survives
His most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry, known as the Socratic method. To solve a problem, it would be broken down into a series of questions, the answers to which gradually distill the answer a person would seek. The influence of this approach is most strongly felt today in the use of the scientific method, in which hypothesis is the first stage. He cross-examined people to try and discover the meaning of virtues, but mostly exposed ignorance of others. A very useful way to start any task.

Socrates believed the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. He invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace. These are the correct focus points for a cooperative species that requires knowledge to maintain its existence.

Socrates opposed the moral relativism of Sophists. He believed there were objective moral standards that could be discovered, that there were right and wrong answers to moral questions that went beyond mere opinion and popular sentiment. We are now discovering these rules through the understanding of the principles of evolution and how species survive.

Needs to Adapt
Socrates objected to any form of government that did not conform to his ideal of a perfect republic led by philosophers. Once the true purpose of government is understood, we see that there are places for many different kinds of people in this sphere - economists, managers, criminologists, educators, scientists. They should not be philosophers in the strict definition of today, but they should all be aware of the philosophy that governs government.

One of the best-known sayings of Socrates is, "I only know that I know nothing." The conventional interpretation of this remark is that Socrates' wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance. Pithy, but diminishes the enormous wealth of knowledge that humans actually have now. It is worth keeping in mind however that there is still much to learn.

Gone Extinct
In the Dialogues of Plato, Socrates often seems to support a mystical side, discussing reincarnation and the mystery religions. This is an unfortunate side effect of the ignorance of the times.
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He wasn't always right, but if I had to guess, I would say that as long as Greece is peaceably populated by Greeks, the Parthenon will remain supported and standing, but as long as there are humans anywhere who note the birth of critical thinking, then Socrates will be remembered. Stronger than stone? Sometimes philosophy can be.

Finally! After struggling through the early mystical musings of Judaism, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism—where very little thought survives intact in terms of philosophical fitness—I get to look at a new civilization that cemented its place in world history by turning away from all that mumbo jumbo. Ancient Greece. In the 6th century BCE, the Presocratic philosophers emerged and came to be called physiology (φυσιολόγοι) or the first physical philosophers. Aristotle called them "physikoi (physicists after physis or "nature") because they sought natural explanations for phenomena, as opposed to the earlier theologoi (theologians), whose philosophical basis was supernatural." Is it any wonder that Greece became the cradle of democracy—our dominant surviving political structure—since they were the first to question the dictatorial dogma of divinely revealed knowledge? We owe them much.

Unfortunately, we know only a little about these men and rarely give them their proper due other than to lump them together in an adjectival term showing they at least predated and therefore influenced the father of philosophy. Our understanding of the Presocratics is "complicated by the incomplete nature of our evidence. Most of them wrote at least one “book” (short pieces of prose writing, it seems, or, in some cases, poems of not great length), but no complete work survives. Instead, we are dependent on later philosophers, historians, and compilers of collections of ancient wisdom for disconnected quotations and reports about their views." Individually, none of their surviving works justifies naming them to my brief list of the most famous philosophers, worthy of analysis in an overview of Evolutionary Philosophy, but here (and in future versions of my work), their names can at least be known in a top 10 list, since, you know, we hate those, even though our brains love them. Counting down to my overview of their collected works then, here they are:

10. Empedocles
9. Zeno
8. Parmenides
7. Protagoras
6. Gorgias
5. Anaxagoras
4. Heraclitus
3. Thales of Miletus
2. Democritus
1. Pythagoras

(Seriously, check out that top 10 list for more on each of these men.)
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Pre-Socratic Western Philosophy (600-440 BCE)

Survives
The efforts of these earlier philosophers had been directed somewhat exclusively to the investigation of the ultimate basis and essential nature of the external world. There was an emphasis on questions of nature. They rejected mythological explanations of the world. And some have continued this tradition down through the ages.

Needs to Adapt
It was during this time that the concept of atoms – uncuttables - was developed. The concept is right, but we are still building more and more powerful supercolliders to find the smallest pieces of matter.

During this time, Sophists held that all thought rests solely on the apprehension of the senses and on subjective impression, and that therefore we have no other standards of action than convention for the individual. This is the basis of thought, but the Sophists failed to recognize that we exist in a universe where failure to act correctly is met with extinction. This creates a powerful standard for action.

Gone Extinct
Philosophers believed water, air, and fire were the principal things and that the primary opposites were hot and cold, and moist and dry. Later (470 BCE) the four elements of earth, air, water, and fire were developed, and two forces – love for attraction, strife for separation - were determined. Our understanding of chemical elements and forces has come a long way.
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Now that we are looking at the natural world, the stage is set for some actual philosophy. Next week, Socrates!

Most of what we Westerners can quote of "Confucianism," sadly consists of terribly punny one-line jokes often written in insensitive Chinglish language. The original writings by the 5th-6th century BCE philosopher, however, contain many pearls of wisdom, predominant among them is one of the earliest forms of the Golden Rule. I'll get to some of the general teachings of this tradition in a moment, but since I love a good pun and feel like being less serious on the blog this week (and mean no harm speaking English in more literal translations), here are a few from the tried and true bin of Confucius Says jokes.

Confucius say:

Man who run in front of car get tired.
Man who run behind car get exhausted.
War not determine who is right, war determine who is left.
Man who drive like hell, bound to get there.
Man who jump off cliff, jump to conclusion!
Man who walk through airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok.
Man who put head on railroad track to listen for train likely to end up with splitting headache.
Man who cut self while shaving, lose face.
Man who fart in church sit in own pew.
Virginity like bubble: one prick, all gone.

Ok then….  Since no major tenets of Confucianism remain intact after using a lens of evolutionary philosophy to examine the survival of the fittest philosophers, I fell less bad about sharing those jokes, but I still feel bad enough that I'd prefer to move on quickly. Here then, is my brief analysis of what Confucius actually said. As always, quotes from wikipedia about the philosophers are written in italics and my responses follow in plain text.

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Confucius (551-479 BCE) was a Chinese politician, teacher, editor, and social philosopher. Following the victory of Han over Chu after the collapse of Qin, Confucius's thoughts received official sanction and were further developed into a system known as Confucianism.

Survives

Needs to Adapt
Confucius puts the greatest emphasis on the importance of study. Far from trying to build a systematic theory of life and society or establish a formalism of rites, he wanted his disciples to think deeply for themselves and relentlessly study the outside world, mostly through the old scriptures and by relating the moral problems of the present to past political events or past expressions of feelings by common people and reflective members of the elite. Learning is the way to progress and remain viable in a changing environment. Rather than relying primarily on writings from the past though, as if all knowledge has already been obtained, it is better to learn what we have learned in order to see what we still need to know, and then go out and find it.

One of the deepest teachings of Confucius may have been the superiority of personal exemplification over explicit rules of behavior. His moral teachings emphasized self-cultivation, emulation of moral exemplars, and the attainment of skilled judgment rather than knowledge of rules. Confucius, an exemplar of human excellence, serves as the ultimate model, rather than a deity or a universally true set of abstract principles. For these reasons, Confucius' teaching may be considered a Chinese example of humanism. Personal actions are more important than merely professing beliefs. Explicit rules are too innumerable to enumerate. The possibility of variations in circumstances often makes universal statements incorrect or too simple. Whether an action strives toward the goal of continued life over the long-term is what needs to be decided. This is a universally true principle to guide our judgment.

Confucius' political thought is based upon his ethical thought. He argues that the best government is one that rules through "rites" and people's natural morality, rather than by using bribery and coercion. Confucius pushed a new political agenda of his own: a revival of a unified royal state, whose rulers would succeed to power on the basis of their moral merits instead of lineage. These would be rulers devoted to their people, striving for personal and social perfection, and such a ruler would spread his own virtues to the people instead of imposing proper behavior with laws and rules. While he supported the idea of government by an all-powerful sage, ruling as an Emperor, his ideas contained a number of elements to limit the power of rulers. This is well intentioned, but misunderstands the purpose of government, the need for it to have a monopoly on force, the requirement to check and balance its powers. It may not have been permitted then to say that there should be no royal state, but we now know better.

Gone Extinct
One of his most famous teachings was the Golden Rule: What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others. This is too simple on its own. It assumes you and the others know what is good for yourselves. It also fails to recognize the diversity in human abilities and needs. Since it can easily lead to unintended harm, drop this rule. There is nothing golden (eternal and unchanging) about it.

The Confucian theory of ethics is based on three important conceptual aspects of life: ceremonies associated with sacrifice to ancestors and deities of various types; social and political institutions; and the etiquette of daily behavior. There are no deities and while we should remember our ancestors and be thankful for what they have built for us, sacrifices to them are wasteful. A comprehensive theory of ethics must be able to define what is good and why. Lists of political and social etiquette are not enough.
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That's what I say about what Confucius say. What say you?